It's that time of year to feast on turkey and all the trimmings, a traditional thing to do, but without enough thanks to the cooks. It's hard work for somebody but giggles and grins for everyone else. In recent years, we've taken a stand on that sort of thing and have dispensed with the cooking. There'll be no big feast here this year, like last year when we went to a Chinese restaurant. The turkey gets a break around here now, and we may never do it again. The cook gets a break too, and she's thankful for that. But I have memories of Thanksgivings past that are worthwhile. I think most families have a way of personalizing Thanksgiving, like in my growing up years there was also shrimp gumbo prepared by my Cajun uncle. To me, that was the best part of the meal.
I love Thanksgiving food - the turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and fancy vegetable dishes. I love the desserts and the day with family and friends, but we all get old sooner or later. Family members drift away and have their own families to tend to, and that's the way it should be. As my wife and I aged, so did Thanksgiving as it moved to other houses where the kids had settled. One year I drove through a snowstorm to get to the feast, and said on the way home, "Never again." I broke that vow a time or two, but even though all I have to do now is drive across town for the feast, I'll bow out and leave it to the kids. We might stop by later on, but the giggles and grins have gone out of celebrating the feast now. I think that comes from understanding that one day a year to give thanks for the lives we have isn't enough. Why not do it everyday? And does it have to be a feast to remind us of what we should be thankful for?
Giving up a special holiday might not seem like much of a sacrifice, but this was always my favorite holiday. I'm not a Christmas person. The commercialization of that holiday ruined it for me some time ago. We haven't had a tree or decorations around here in a lot of years now, and the giving of gifts turned to just some money to special people to buy what they really wanted. We forgot what Christmas is supposed to be about. I've also considered the possibility we've really forgotten what Thanksgiving should be about, which makes it less essential, just too much fuss and bother. I'll be thankful today, that's for sure. I'll push aside all the things that bother me and think of the good things, and not just for today. Maybe Thanksgiving should be about the promise of a better tomorrow, something that's not easy to feel good about sometimes. Here's what I'm thankful for: I still have some life left, for however long it lasts, and I still have choices as to how I'll live it. That should be enough.
Showing posts with label traditions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traditions. Show all posts
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Sunday, October 19, 2014
ROOT ROT: SMALL TOWN AMERICA IN DECLINE
Sunday morning in rural America, a small town in central Texas, a place that's been around since shortly after the Civil War. You can see the oldness around here and in other towns nearby, and like all small towns, some old time traditions hang on. Nobody around here gets in a big hurry, so life here is comfortable (if you don't mind the slow pace). The countryside around here is good to look upon, the weather in always pretty nice, and the people are friendly. From the outside looking in, this place looks fairly prosperous. Few people worry much about the future, don't pay a lot of attention to what's going on in the world around them, and their philosophy is rooted in rural stoicism. You take life as it comes.
So, on this Sunday morning I drove across town to take care of my shop animals, those cats and dogs that expect to be fed twice a day. Chores here at home with animals are done for the morning - front porch cats to feed, inside cats to be fed and let out for a while, check the yard to make sure everything is secure there, and then go to the local donut store for some breakfast. People are stirring around, heading for church, and there's a crowd at the place I buy breakfast . . . a place run by Cambodians. If you get your nails done in a salon, some Vietnamese gal will likely do that, and there's a Chinese restaurant just off the square. Last night at a drive through place, the vehicle in front of me was a big foreign made SUV, driven by a grossly overweight Mexican/American lady (this town his half their numbers), with kids hanging out every window. At the local high school football game a few weeks back, I noticed few white kids on the field for our team. My waiter at the Italian restaurant on the square didn't speak good English when I went there not long ago, and all but one motel in town belongs to Indians. You know, like from India type Indians. A hamburger place on main street is owned by some dude from Afghanistan.
My home town is dependent on the oil business, and when that goes bust, the town takes an economic nosedive. Since some seven highways cross there, we've got lots of trucking companies. A factory outside of town makes big trailers and oil field equipment. We've got sand plants here, those places that supply the sand used in fracking for oil . . . big businesses, lots of money into the local economy. Yeah, things are sorta booming around here . . . and the town is still dying. Dying in the sense that it's no longer what rural America used to be; it's no longer a place that keeps up a culture that became the roots of America. And we all know what happens to a tree that gets root disease. It can stand lightning strikes and survive, blistering winds, drought, all sorts of things, but when the roots go bad, the tree is a goner. America is suffering from root rot, dying from the bottom up, and we're too dumb to see it.
But wait! Not everyone is totally unobservant or ignorant about what's happening to us. Cities, where most of our population lives, can't save America from root rot. They are there for reasons - the need for jobs, the lust for the urban experiene, all that . . . and I'm glad they're there. Cities are also magnets for almost everything that is wrong with us as a nation. Overcrowding is causing us big time problems because people in need flock to the cities. Taking care of them costs billions of buck, and some of those costs are not easy to recognize. I like the cities because I want those people to stay there, not come out here to our rural areas and fuck it up like they have their own backyard. Maybe you've noticed, but city folks are always wanting to dump their waste on the country folks. There's a value out here opposed to that, and I want that preserved. Country culture is important to this nation because we are the root stock, the beginning place, and not because we provide the urban areas with more people. Yeah, we're backward in some ways, but that's not always bad. Somebody needs to take action to save the small towns . . . or we all go down with them.
I welcome the newcomers, the foreigners and the minorities, to small towns . . . but only if they are able to adapt to our way of life. Do it our way, the root way, or don't come. Everything changes, and that's a fact, but we need to resist the changes that tear us down. We need to, but we probably won't, and that will bring about the demise of what made us a great nation. We die from the roots, and I'm not sure we can stop that process. My advice to anyone who lives like I do, in a small town that still has something worth saving is to resist the rot. Hang on, baby . . . hang on.
So, on this Sunday morning I drove across town to take care of my shop animals, those cats and dogs that expect to be fed twice a day. Chores here at home with animals are done for the morning - front porch cats to feed, inside cats to be fed and let out for a while, check the yard to make sure everything is secure there, and then go to the local donut store for some breakfast. People are stirring around, heading for church, and there's a crowd at the place I buy breakfast . . . a place run by Cambodians. If you get your nails done in a salon, some Vietnamese gal will likely do that, and there's a Chinese restaurant just off the square. Last night at a drive through place, the vehicle in front of me was a big foreign made SUV, driven by a grossly overweight Mexican/American lady (this town his half their numbers), with kids hanging out every window. At the local high school football game a few weeks back, I noticed few white kids on the field for our team. My waiter at the Italian restaurant on the square didn't speak good English when I went there not long ago, and all but one motel in town belongs to Indians. You know, like from India type Indians. A hamburger place on main street is owned by some dude from Afghanistan.
My home town is dependent on the oil business, and when that goes bust, the town takes an economic nosedive. Since some seven highways cross there, we've got lots of trucking companies. A factory outside of town makes big trailers and oil field equipment. We've got sand plants here, those places that supply the sand used in fracking for oil . . . big businesses, lots of money into the local economy. Yeah, things are sorta booming around here . . . and the town is still dying. Dying in the sense that it's no longer what rural America used to be; it's no longer a place that keeps up a culture that became the roots of America. And we all know what happens to a tree that gets root disease. It can stand lightning strikes and survive, blistering winds, drought, all sorts of things, but when the roots go bad, the tree is a goner. America is suffering from root rot, dying from the bottom up, and we're too dumb to see it.
But wait! Not everyone is totally unobservant or ignorant about what's happening to us. Cities, where most of our population lives, can't save America from root rot. They are there for reasons - the need for jobs, the lust for the urban experiene, all that . . . and I'm glad they're there. Cities are also magnets for almost everything that is wrong with us as a nation. Overcrowding is causing us big time problems because people in need flock to the cities. Taking care of them costs billions of buck, and some of those costs are not easy to recognize. I like the cities because I want those people to stay there, not come out here to our rural areas and fuck it up like they have their own backyard. Maybe you've noticed, but city folks are always wanting to dump their waste on the country folks. There's a value out here opposed to that, and I want that preserved. Country culture is important to this nation because we are the root stock, the beginning place, and not because we provide the urban areas with more people. Yeah, we're backward in some ways, but that's not always bad. Somebody needs to take action to save the small towns . . . or we all go down with them.
I welcome the newcomers, the foreigners and the minorities, to small towns . . . but only if they are able to adapt to our way of life. Do it our way, the root way, or don't come. Everything changes, and that's a fact, but we need to resist the changes that tear us down. We need to, but we probably won't, and that will bring about the demise of what made us a great nation. We die from the roots, and I'm not sure we can stop that process. My advice to anyone who lives like I do, in a small town that still has something worth saving is to resist the rot. Hang on, baby . . . hang on.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
I WANT TO GO TO MADRID
I want to go to Madrid, but not the city in Spain. The Madrid I'm talking about is a village along the Turquoise Trail in New Mexico, a place with about 400 inhabitants. I went to Madrid for the first time back in the early 1970s, when it was still pretty much just a ghost town. About all I saw there then were a few hippies living in tumbled down old houses, but that was before the restoration of the village took place. Madrid is now a thriving little town that's somewhat of an art haven, and some of those artists are the real thing. I kept going back to Madrid on occasions over they years, watched it grow and come alive again, but I haven't been there now in twenty years. It's time to see it again, to see if it became what I hoped it would.
The Turquoise Trail is an old highway liking Santa Fe to Albuquerque, and most folks who travel it are tourists out to absorb some New Mexico culture. That's why most tourists come to northern New Mexico, especially to Santa Fe. Santa Fe itself is a city of perhaps seventy thousand, but all sorts of smaller towns and villages around it bring the total population of that area to around a quarter of a million people. Madrid is in the desert south of Santa Fe, near mountains, and within easy driving distance to a city. I'm wondering if Madrid has been able to pull off what Santa Fe lost . . . that art colony atmosphere. Are the artists really there, or is the village full of curio shops and stuff like that? Just checking it out on Google Earth, it looks like some legitimate artists are indeed there, and I see few signs of all the tacky stuff showing up. You know, the fast food places, the foreign made stuff sold in curio shops, the motels, etc. Madrid is too small for most of that, and that's the really good thing about the place.
Even small places can have things worth seeing. There's an old railroad museum in Madrid, and a baseball field with an interesting story behind it. Why would such a tiny town have a fancy baseball park? Well, because a guy who owned a coal mine there many years ago wanted the town to have a baseball team, so he build the field. When the coal played out, the town played out too, and the baseball field went neglected like everything else around there. I understand that the state took over the baseball field, but I don't know if it's used for actually playing baseball now. It's worth preserving, I think, because even little Madrid once had a farm team associated with the Dodgers. I'm old enough to remember when small towns sponsored baseball teams. I even played on one for a while, back in the old days. We lost something when town leagues disappeared, and so did the weekly games held in the fields built around the country.
Yeah, I need to go back to Madrid and hang out a few days, maybe drift on up to Santa Fe and see what's still there worth seeing. One of the few advantages of being old is remembering how things used to be, back before corporate America spoiled so much of the traditional things people like me appreciate. The one constant you can count on is change, and sometimes it isn't an improvement over what we already had. Progress, under whatever name we call it, is sometimes a regression.
The Turquoise Trail is an old highway liking Santa Fe to Albuquerque, and most folks who travel it are tourists out to absorb some New Mexico culture. That's why most tourists come to northern New Mexico, especially to Santa Fe. Santa Fe itself is a city of perhaps seventy thousand, but all sorts of smaller towns and villages around it bring the total population of that area to around a quarter of a million people. Madrid is in the desert south of Santa Fe, near mountains, and within easy driving distance to a city. I'm wondering if Madrid has been able to pull off what Santa Fe lost . . . that art colony atmosphere. Are the artists really there, or is the village full of curio shops and stuff like that? Just checking it out on Google Earth, it looks like some legitimate artists are indeed there, and I see few signs of all the tacky stuff showing up. You know, the fast food places, the foreign made stuff sold in curio shops, the motels, etc. Madrid is too small for most of that, and that's the really good thing about the place.
Even small places can have things worth seeing. There's an old railroad museum in Madrid, and a baseball field with an interesting story behind it. Why would such a tiny town have a fancy baseball park? Well, because a guy who owned a coal mine there many years ago wanted the town to have a baseball team, so he build the field. When the coal played out, the town played out too, and the baseball field went neglected like everything else around there. I understand that the state took over the baseball field, but I don't know if it's used for actually playing baseball now. It's worth preserving, I think, because even little Madrid once had a farm team associated with the Dodgers. I'm old enough to remember when small towns sponsored baseball teams. I even played on one for a while, back in the old days. We lost something when town leagues disappeared, and so did the weekly games held in the fields built around the country.
Yeah, I need to go back to Madrid and hang out a few days, maybe drift on up to Santa Fe and see what's still there worth seeing. One of the few advantages of being old is remembering how things used to be, back before corporate America spoiled so much of the traditional things people like me appreciate. The one constant you can count on is change, and sometimes it isn't an improvement over what we already had. Progress, under whatever name we call it, is sometimes a regression.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)